Huntsman doesn't want Hatch's job

Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. said Tuesday he is not interested in becoming a U.S. senator should Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, be picked by President Bush to be U.S. attorney general.

"Absolutely not," Huntsman told the Deseret Morning News in a telephone interview from Toronto, Canada, where he is on a three-day economic development tour with nine high-tech Utah businesses.

Under state law, if there is a vacancy in one of Utah's two U.S. Senate seats, the governor makes an interim appointment until the next general election, when voters would pick a new senator to fill out the rest of the six-year term.

And anyone picked for that interim service would have a leg up on winning the GOP nomination in that next election — although he most assuredly would be challenged from within his own party.

Huntsman said he would not let his name come forward from Utah GOP leaders as a possible U.S. Senate appointee.

"Those who think so must confuse me with someone who is power-hungry," Huntsman said.

The governor said he would finish his first term — which ends next year — and then seek a second term, which would end in 2012.

"I have no interest in returning to Washington (D.C.)," where he served two stints previously as an ambassador, he said.

The GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in 2008 would have a near lock on the office. Utahns have not elected a Democratic U.S. senator since Frank Moss in 1970 — and Hatch, then a political unknown, defeated that incumbent in 1976.

The issue of Hatch becoming U.S. attorney general remains a topic of discussion in Washington, D.C., and in Utah after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made what many believe was a poor showing during a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing a week ago on the firing of eight U.S. attorneys — a hearing in which Hatch threw several softball questions at the embattled Gonzales while other GOP senators called for Gonzales' resignation.

Several days earlier, on "Meet the Press," Hatch was asked if he would consider becoming attorney general if Gonzales resigned. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., joked that Hatch was "running" for the presidential appointment to the top law enforcement job.